The Missouri Compromise was United States federal legislation that admitted Maine to the United States as a free state with Missouri as a slave state—thus maintaining the balance of power between North and South in the United States Senate. As part of the compromise, the legislation prohibited slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel, excluding Missouri; the 16th United States Congress passed the legislation on March 3, 1820, President James Monroe signed it on March 6, 1820. Earlier, on February 1819, Representative James Tallmadge Jr. a Jeffersonian Republican from New York, submitted two amendments to Missouri's request for statehood, which included restrictions on slavery. Southerners objected to any bill that imposed federal restrictions on slavery, believing that slavery was a state issue settled by the Constitution. However, with the Senate evenly split at the opening of the debates, both sections possessing 11 states, the admission of Missouri as a slave state would give the South an advantage.

Northern critics including Federalists and Democratic-Republicans objected to the expansion of slavery into the Louisiana Purchase territory on the Constitutional inequalities of the three-fifths rule, which conferred Southern representation in the federal government derived from a states' slave population. Jeffersonian Republicans in the North ardently maintained that a strict interpretation of the Constitution required that Congress act to limit the spread of slavery on egalitarian grounds. " Republicans rooted their antislavery arguments, not on expediency, but in egalitarian morality". When free-soil Maine offered its petition for statehood, the Senate linked the Maine and Missouri bills, making Maine admission a condition for Missouri entering the Union as a slave state. Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois added a compromise proviso that excluded slavery from all remaining lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36° 30' parallel; the combined measures passed the Senate, only to be voted down in the House by those Northern representatives who held out for a free Missouri.

Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky, in a desperate bid to break the deadlock, divided the Senate bills. Clay and his pro-compromise allies succeeded in pressuring half the anti-restrictionist House Southerners to submit to the passage of the Thomas proviso, while maneuvering a number of restrictionist House northerners to acquiesce in supporting Missouri as a slave state; the Missouri question in the 15th Congress ended in stalemate on March 4, 1819, the House sustaining its northern antislavery position, the Senate blocking a slavery restricted statehood. The Missouri Compromise was controversial at the time, as many worried that the country had become lawfully divided along sectional lines; the Kansas–Nebraska Act repealed the bill in 1854, the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in Dred Scott v. Sandford; this increased tensions over slavery and led to the Civil War. The Era of Good Feelings associated with the administration of President James Monroe, was characterized by the dissolution of national political identities.

With the discredited Federalists in decline nationally, the "amalgamated" or hybridized Republicans adopted key Federalist economic programs and institutions, further erasing party identities and consolidating their victory. The economic nationalism of the Era of Good Feelings that would authorize the Tariff of 1816 and incorporate the Second Bank of the United States portended an abandonment of the Jeffersonian political formula for strict construction of the constitution, a limited central government and commitments to the primacy of Southern agrarian interests; the end of opposition parties meant the end of party discipline and the means to suppress internecine factional animosities. Rather than produce political harmony, as President James Monroe had hoped, amalgamation had led to intense rivalries among Jeffersonian Republicans, it was amid the "good feelings" of this period – during which Republican Party discipline was in abeyance – that the Tallmadge Amendment surfaced. The immense Louisiana Purchase territories had been acquired through federal executive action, followed by Republican legislative authorization in 1803 during the Thomas Jefferson administration.

Prior to its purchase in 1803, the governments of Spain and France had sanctioned slavery in the region. In 1812, the state of Louisiana, a major cotton producer and the first to be carved from the Louisiana Purchase, had entered the Union as a slave state. Predictably, Missourians were adamant that slave labor should not be molested by the federal government. In the years following the War of 1812, the region, now known as Missouri Territory, experienced rapid settlement, led by slaveholding planters. Agriculturally, the land comprising the lower reaches of the Missouri River, from which that new state would be formed, had no prospects as a major cotton producer. Suited for diversified farming, the only crop regarded as promising for slave labor was hemp culture. On that basis, southern planters immigrated with their chattel to Missouri, the slave population rising from 3,100 in 1810 to 10,000 in 1820. In a total population 67,000, slaves represented about 15 percent. By 1818, the population of Missouri territory was approaching the threshold that would qualify it for statehood.

An enabling act was provided to Congress empowering territorial residents to select convention delegates and draft a state constitution. The admission of Missouri territory as a slave state was expected to be more or less

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature. Samuel Daniel, The Queenes Arcadia: A pastoral tragecomedie John Davies, Bien Venu: Greate Britaines welcome to hir greate friendes, deere breathren, the Danes Thomas Dekker, The Double PP: a Papist in Armes, published anonymously Michael Drayton's Poems Lyrick and Pastorall, including "The Ballad of Agincourt" John Ford, Fames Memoriall. February 28 - Sir William Davenant, English poet and playwright March 3 - Edmund Waller, English poet and politician May 3 - Lorenzo Lippi, Italian painter and poet Also: Karacaoğlan, Turkish folk poet and ashik Johannes Khuen, Bavarian priest and composer Junije Palmotić, Ragusan dramatist and poet Samarth Ramdas, Indian Marathi saint and religious poet Thomas Washbourne, English clergyman and poet March 2 - Martin Moller, German poet and mystic May 13 - Arthur Golding, English translator of prose and poetry May 22 - José de Sigüenza, Spanish historian and theologian September 2 - Karel van Mander, Flemish-born Dutch painter and poet October 5 - Philippe Desportes, French November 20 - John Lyly, English writer and poet Also: Baltasar del Alcázar, Spanish Simwnt Fychan, Welsh language poet and genealogist

Walter Cooper Dendy was an English surgeon and writer. Dendy was born on 1 Oct 1794 to Stephen Cooper Dendy and Marianne Dubbins at or near Horsham in Sussex. After an apprenticeship in that locality he came to London about 1811, entered himself as a student at Guy's and St. Thomas's hospitals, he became a member of the College of Surgeons in 1814, commenced practice in Stamford Street, changing his residence soon after to 6 Great Eastcheap. He was chosen a fellow of the Medical Society of London, became president, he was an admirable speaker. Dendy was not a mere surgeon, he published a poem of much merit entitled ‘Zone,’ and the ‘Philosophy of Mystery,’ 1841, a treatise on dreams, spectral illusions, other imperfect manifestations of the mind. He held some peculiar religious views, but his mind was too much imbued with enthusiasm for him to be a materialist, he was the author of many books, contributed to medical journals, was the writer of some remarkable papers in the ‘Psychological Journal.’ He was an admirable draughtsman, illustrated his own works.

His last efforts with his pencil were some sketches of the scenes described by the poet Cowper in the neighbourhood of Olney and Weston Underwood. For a long period he acted as senior surgeon to the Royal Infirmary for Children in the Waterloo Road, he was nominated a fellow of the Anthropological Society of London on 2 April 1867, on 3 Nov. 1868 read a paper on ‘Anthropogenesis’ before the society, which contained a trenchant attack on the Darwinian doctrines. He was retired in his habits, with the exception of attending the annual dinner of the Medical Society and the biennial festival of the students of Guy's Hospital, he appeared at any convivial meetings of the profession. Having retired from practice, he occupied his time in the reading-room of the British Museum, where his eccentric costume made him a well-known character. After a short illness he died at 25 Suffolk Street, London, on 10 Dec. 1871, aged 77. His book On the Phenomena of Dreams, Other Transient Illusions, was an early work that attempted to find medical explanations for dreams and psychical experiences.

A Treatise on the Cutaneous Diseases incidental to Childhood On the Phenomena of Dreams and other Transient Illusions The Book of the Nursery Practical Remarks on the Diseases of the Skin Philosophy of Mystery Hints on Health and Diseases of the Skin Monograph I. On the Cerebral Diseases of Children Wonders displayed by the Human Body in the Endurance of Injury. From the Portfolio of Delta (1848. Portraits of the Diseases of the Scalp The varieties of Pock delineated and described Psyche, a Discourse on the Birth and Pilgrimage of Thought The Beautiful Islets of Britaine The Islets of the Channel The Wild Hebrides A Gleam of the Spirit Mystery Legends of the Lintel and the Ley This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Dendy, Walter Cooper". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. Works by Walter Cooper Dendy at Project Gutenberg Works by Walter Cooper Dendy at Faded Page